Apple Patents ‘Friend Or Foe' Identification System For Social Networking Apps And Services

http://techcrunch.com –
Apple has been granted a patent today (via AppleInsider) in an area where it hasn’t had tremendous success: social networking. But the system described in the patent isn’t specific to Apple’s own social services, and instead describes software that could be integrated into iOS and made accessible to other apps and services as an API to help regulate and maintain a common “friend service database.”
On the one hand, Apple’s patent describes a way to reconcile data from various apps around friends and friend requests, updating existing contacts and merging ent
(IT news)

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In a new patent filing published by the USPTO today (via AppleInsider), Apple describes a system for setting essentially an “Away/Available/Busy” style status for receiving phone calls on a smartphone device, but one that updates said status intelligently and automatically using data gathered about the device and its settings.
So the basic premise is this: Just like you can on Skype an